Proprietary software's inferiorities, such as this control center downgrade, remind me of that one Dhar Mann video where kids enjoy homemade food and insult what the "award winning pastry chef" made.
I'd like to use a Linux phone, but it has to run Android apps though. They Gotta find a way, else it's never gonna happen.
It'd theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop with a 5G cell modem for data, use SIP service and a GNU/Linux dialer, and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.
Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.
And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like "only update X when on WiFi". Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.
waydroid?
A program like Wine, but to run Android apps on a Linux machine would be great. It would use a lot less battery power than a virtual machine.
I'm always surprised more people still don't know about it but FuriLabs does have an offering which I've heard does this pretty well: https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
And some more info. (albeit, 9 months old): https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
It is using Halium but, otherwise, it's proper GNU+Linux with decent spec.s.
SailfishOS can do that. They have a sandbox for android that you should not really notice as a end user.
How good is it with background activities?
About the only thing holding me back is that my phone runs a continuous glucose monitor, constantly connecting with a small sensor in my arm. That all quietly dying in the background would just... not be an option.
A phone I'm excited for is the Bigme Hibreak Pro. Its got an e-paper screen that refreshes at a tolerable speed, and you can install apps from the Google Play store which run just fine. Will it ever play video smoothly? Fuck no. Is it cool? Also no. Is it horrifically expensive? Surprisingly, also no.
Bigme has also made some exciting (but way too expensive) progress in the desktop computer world by making a 60hz eink monitor. It frankly is terrible at most things people do on their home computers, but it can keep up just fine with the boring work stuff like Vim and the MS Office Suite. Am I willing to pay almost $2k for a monitor for work? Absolutely not, but I'm glad it exists.
I'd honestly like to have an e-ink monitor because I do a lot of coding and writing, without 60hz, just like e-book with speedy updates over empty space. It can be a secondary one dedicated to just these tasks. But the lack of demand makes it too exclusive for my pocket.
Waydroid works to run android apps on my ubuntu touch
I mean Waydroid runs Android apps on linux. Its currently the only way to play Roblox on linux with only 1 layer of trust (Roblox itself) (Sober exists but theres no source code, meaning you have to trust Roblox and SoberDevs code)
It's never going to be the year of the Linux phone until there's one that actually has specs to do the things the majority of people want
Thus far, all the Linux phones I've seen had laughable specs. There's the Liberux NEXX, but it's still at the concept stage
It's also $1500.
Step one is making it exist, step 2 is making it marketable and scalable. Expecting this for competitive pricing in the early stages is unrealistic. Until there’s a real market for truly open phones pushed with millions in marketing to go along with competitive hardware that takes ages to develop, the well-priced phone will remain laden with unauthorized changes, tracking and advertising. This is all before you get software developers on board before it actually sells to people.
Unless all you need are phone calls or text messaging. That could probably be done at a reasonable price. There’s probably already several decent projects out there to homebrew that.
Perhaps closer to what you're thinking of? https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
Trolltech made a great phone, apparently.
Way back when, I had a Palm Pixie, which ran WebOS. While it wasn’t FOSS, if you turned on developer mode, you would have full terminal access to the Linux system it was running.
I think HP eventually made it open source and now LG uses it for their TVs. But that phone’s OS was one of the best ones I had seen at the time.
WebOS, PalmOS, and Sailfish OS are the only mobile OSes I've ever not disliked. I wish Jolla seemed a little more trustworthy so I could switch to Sailfish as my main phone os
The Palm Pre 2 was, by far, the best phone I have ever used in my life. Then HP abandoned it, like they did everything else worthwhile.
I'm very open to being an early adopter of mobile Linux phones. I've been unable to because of a couple of factors. I last seriously checked about half a year ago so take this with a pinch of salt.
To get a Linux phone to be competitive on performance we'll need to get driver APIs and component lists open sourced so it'll be easier to gather the appropriate info and make drivers.
There has been tons of progress though, Gnome and KDE have really strong touch support now and the apps scale decently.
It's coming but now fairphone is the only phone that openly supports Linux mobile distros and is open sourced.
I’m very open to being an early adopter of mobile Linux phones.
vs
the rest of your post
What you are trying to say is you are very open to be a late adopter of mobile Linux phones, adopting a Linux phone when it actually works.
Early adopters are those who tough out the crap. The issue with Linux phones is they've been stuck in early adopter land for the last 20 years.
I'm up for installing Linux on my last phone when it's added to the list of devices that have official/unofficial support. I'm not going to install anything until WiFi and mobile data is supported tbh.
I tried installing Ubuntu touch for fun a couple of years ago but it didn't boot. I just want to get to a point where I can install the OS and send bug reports.
Lack of extensive driver support. Phones turn off components to save power, this was not supported the last time I checked and halves the battery life compared to stock android.
The lack of extensive driver support is real, but I've actually doubled my battery's power with Lineage OS just by removing bloatware
LineageOS is based on android so it gets a lot of goodies with it.
In my case my country simply doesn't get any
When I first saw this... This is like a very very bad free Android icon pack. Makes the phone straight unusable. Can you actually switch to the normal "theme"? My wife unfortunately has an iPhone and I, as an IT guy in the family, usually get blamed for OS updates on her phone, whenever something becomes different. This won't go down easily :)
I sure hope so. Additionally I hope apple will start paywalling core functions.
What I mean to say: lineageOS works well, the phones are cheap and very usable. The OS is free and the more people use it the better it will become.
iOS developer here and I would switch in a heartbeat but unfortunately it’s not about the OS, it’s about the software that runs on the OS.
Most devs wont build for an OS that doesn’t have an audience. And users will put up with a lot of OS junk for their apps.
So it’s gonna be up to someone to make a linux phone and use their wallet to kickstart a software ecosystem. One won’t happen without the other, at least not at the scale of Google or Apple.
I am writing this comment on an ubuntu touch phone, it is very usable surprisingly, been on it for months now
Are you just using web login for everything then? Like for banking and such?
How do you navigate Incompatibilities?
My banking app works just fine but probs specific to mine. android apps run just well. I don't have much problems to navigate
Are you in the US? If yes, which band (GSM/CDMA) and which phone? Ive been wanting to get off of pixels & Android for ages but I'm scared of not being able to actually use my phone as a phone.
Turkey, fairphone, turkcell currently. It runs android apps just fine
I am so considering starting to experiment with an Linux phone. But it will be a long time until it can do contactless payments, bank apps, safe biometrics and heavy apps. Now that I think about it,it shouldn't be impossible.
SailfishOS (on Sony Xperia 10) and UbuntuTouch exist. Also the PinePhone but that is low low end.
I would say give up on contactless if you ever want to use a Linux phone. In addition to the fact that if youre in the US Google/Apple/Samsung are definitely selling your spending habits to the highest bidder, I see no future short of world peace where banks agree to work with FOSS devs to create a secure enough system for wireless payment to work.
Get a thin case and put your card in it numbers facing in. It works the same :P
It's liquid ass
Unfortunately American, meaning Linux phones need to have VOLTE for them to you know, be phones. Until then I'm stuck on grapheneOS
I don't use voice anyway - everything I do is through an app.
Check out jmp.chat - they route everything, your voice calls and SMS, through XMPP. So voice calls are VOIP. I don't even have conventional voice service with them.
Is that actually what it looks like?
Fucking awful if it is.
I've tried Plasma Mobile on a Surface tablet. It does not look like that.
Yes, and I like it (though they should increase the background blur)
Wasn't it always the year of Linux phones like Android has huge share of market and it is running Linux kernel but with Google spyware. Now it's just Apple Spyware.
Lineage OS is android without google spy
I've been using custom ROMs since Cyanogen Mod 14. I know. But still the share of google spyware is high.
without the proprietary google services package yes, but not entirely free from google. one obv example is connectivity check that pings google is still there as far as im aware (please feel free to correct)
I don't know why they made the background blur so subtle. Even I, as a non-UI/UX designer understand that readability is important. Apart from the slightly harsh edges, I think Liquid Glass looks solid. Way better than hideous flat design.
EDIT: To clarify, "Liquid Glass" looking solid does not mean the appearance seeming to not be liquid. It is, in fact, liquid.
You mean Dhar Mann's "Kids insult chef's pastry, INSTANTLY REGRET IT"?!
Guys. I have a samsung m30s. The problem with it is its usb port must be kept at a specific angle... So i bought a new phone.
Now I am thinking of installing Linux on it. How can I go about it?
I like plasma on my desktop.
TLDR: How to install Linux on Samsung M30s
Too In-Depth; Didn't Research (Tid;Dr) response:
Can your bootloader be unlocked?
if no, no linux
if yes, is someone developing Ubuntu Touch, Manjaro Mobile, PostmarketOS etc. for it?
if no, learn how to port linux
if yes find their documentation and follow it
Quality/Results may vary
Tbh, unless you want to suffer A LOT, the best option is to get any Android phone, install Termux and on top install any Linux distro you like (if you want easy mode, pay for Andronix which helps with installation).
Then you just run your Linux distro in a container on Android and view its virtual screen using a VNC viewer app.
That way you get a fully-working Android phone that can run most Linux apps without breaking your main phone use case. The only thing you are really lacking is low-level access because it's running in a root-less proot container. So no hardware acceleration or other fancy hardware stuff.
what phone is that? is that what Apple's liquid glass looks like?
This is only a Control center thing AFAIK. Aside from that, every icon has blur.
cries in firefox os
What gnu + Linux phone should I get, I will buy one. I’d like one I can install Nixos on
I watch those sometimes too. NGL, some are twisted tho
Waiting for a stable release for OnePlus 7.
if you don’t like the control center layout, you can just edit it
I think they’re referring to the new liquid glass design in iOS 26, apparently many people have readability issues with it
i was thinking i’d hate it, and i can still see there are some readability issues to work out… but actually im finding i love it: it really kinda sinks into the background and lets the main content on the screen shine… the “bending” of the content in the panels rather than a blur is a much more effective middle-ground to making the foreground UI disappear until you need it
is this the way of the future? probably not… it’ll be way harder for anyone to implement than a blur, and that’s without the animations etc that make things way more complex…
but i do think it’s interesting to try new things with how you separate foreground and background in UI: we’ve been just chucking a quick blur and semi transparent colour block on buttons etc for a while, and i think this approach has a lot of up-sides
Android uses Linux as far as i know